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| Topic: When did you know you were a racist? | |
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sooo basicly a buncha people who are all the same who classify eachother into smaller groups of the same people. |
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lord of the flies
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I don't see color, I just see stupid.
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Men should continue to fight, but they should fight for things worth while, not for imaginary geographical lines, racial prejudices and private greed draped in the color's of patriotism. - Albert Einstein
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I am not racist by choice .
Racism has many causes and it is well spread in every country . The roots of racism are different religions, languages, skin colours, nationalities, beliefs, social status......etc . As long as we have these factors we shall always have this disease of racism and it is a huge human injustice . |
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Edited by
tohyup
on
Fri 08/28/09 08:34 AM
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Double post .
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I'll share with u a few stories from my 2 boys concernin race an racism. When my 10 yr old was 3 he came to me one afternoon an said, Mama I wanna go outside an play with the chocolate boy. He'd never heard the word black or African/American u see. He'd always gone to a very racial diverse day care from the time he was 6 weeks old. I've always intentionally sent him to a racially diverse day care. Believe me, it ain't easy to find around here. One day I picked him up from day care, he must've been around 4 or 5. The day care teacher pulled me aside an told me he had learned a new word that day. N#gger. Guess who he learned it from? The lil gangster wannabes. They always went around sayin "what up N#gger" to each other. He didn't understand the supposed meanin behind it when a person of his color used the word. He was just tryin to be like his friends.
My youngest child asked me not to long ago. Mama, am I white? I simply told him. No, ur more of a off white, creamy beige. To put it in a nutshell, my children are learnin racism from the very group that should be teachin him tolerance an acceptance of all people. I grew up bein taught that a person's skin color was only a description of their physical self, not the person themselves. I'm doin my utmost to make sure my boys are learnin that same thing, but sometimes it's real hard when they're the ones experiencin the racism themselves. 
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Lulu,
Thanks for posting those stories. It is easy to forget how bad it is in some parts of this country. I felt like crying when I read about the 'go back to africa' statement written on the chalkboard. for the record, race is a social construct. biologically, it doesn't exist. I'm always confused when I read this statement. Clearly, there are some really messed up 'ideas' about 'race' - some of which were even 'accepted' members of the scientific establishment not that long ago. I've read old rationalizations for slavery which presumed that black people were practically a different species. So I'm guessing that there is a 'old' concept of 'race' which I've never personally experienced, which is biologically BS. The fact is we are one species, and I believe we are all related to each other, part of the same family tree. Everybody is my n'th cousin, for some 'n' is low for others 'n' is high. Yet, for a long period of time, there was very little mixing between continents! There are no clear lines, but a vague 'degree of similary' or 'degree of closeness in relation' is still there. In america, after generations of mixing, I can easily believe that a brown person may be a closer relative to me than another pink person. So the question in my mind is: which concept of race is a social construct, and 'doesn't exist' biologically? The fact that people of African descent are prone to sickle cell anemia is not a social construct. There really are regions of our family tree that are have more internal connections than connections with other regions of the tree. This may be given undue significance in our culture, but its still true. (And, in a few hundred years,, with modern technology facilitating easier/cheaper travel and more tolerant attitudes - this may not be true.) |
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I read a study that showed that the genes for skin pigmentation can be selected for faster then almost any evolutionary trait.
The study showed how a group of BLACK skinned people went from black to a tanned white in ~12,000 years, which in evolutionary terms is a blink of the eye. Perception is where race among human kind lives. |
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I grew up being a minority anglo kid in a predominantly Mexican community. I feel more at home in that community than I do in some anglo places
I don't have any problem at all with race. But there are some cultures that I dont like |
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He didn't understand the supposed meanin behind it when a person of his color used the word. He was just tryin to be like his friends. Well stated - this is the supposed meaning behind it if a white person uses it. To me, learning to say 'what up N' from an inter-racial group of children who treat each other well and accept each other; well that would not be learning 'racism' at all. He may be learning a racially insensitive habit, but due to an easily corrected ignorance of context. And if someone teaches him that the word means other things to other people, well then he's learning -about- racism (and hopefully racial sensitivity), but not (necessarily) to be racist. |
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So the question in my mind is: which concept of race is a social construct, and 'doesn't exist' biologically? The fact that people of African descent are prone to sickle cell anemia is not a social construct. There really are regions of our family tree that are have more internal connections than connections with other regions of the tree. This may be given undue significance in our culture, but its still true. (And, in a few hundred years,, with modern technology facilitating easier/cheaper travel and more tolerant attitudes - this may not be true.) there are those that feel that different cultures are also separate genetically, as in the differences between dogs and cats. this is not true...we are more like...oh, the differences between one breed of horse and another. genetically, i'm likely to be closer to the beautiful man with the chocolate skin next door than to my WASP neighbor. literally. somewhere along the way, we decided that we wanted people that shared traits with our families to have an edge up. we defined people that were "like us". a way to make certain our family kept a leg up...to keep our possessions in our name, close to us. it also makes it easier to believe that keeping another society down is alright when you believe they are less than. laws were made to favor our families and our communities. the government decided to quantify us, and they chose traits that were inheritable. all the people in the community were closely related...the people moving in or being given freedom were not. without biology, without genetics...they classified on outward structures alone. with all the DNA advances, we can now show what a load of crap this is. what we DO have are cultural differences. how we are raised, what psychological factors have gone into making us who we are. understanding that each and every one of us come to the table in a different way with a different internal focus...is the key to getting past this. we approach everything with our own internal frame of reference, and our window always faces a direction that the others might not see... if i have some spare time, i'll see if i can find you some excellent reading on what's behind the statement "race is a social construct". |
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For me it was kind of reversed and backwards. I started out not being a racist and then finally became a racist.  Allow me to share my story. When I was a very young child (under 9 years old), it became very clear to me that my father was a very strong racists toward African-Americans in particular. I vividly noticed this because anytime I would react in a friendly manner toward a black child he would take conniptions like as if I had done something really bad. Even as young as I was I used to ask my mother what his problem was with black people. What did they ever do to him, I would ask. She told me that he wasn't racists before he wet into the service. But he want to war in WWII in the Philippines and when he returned he hated black people with a passion for some reason. You'd think a war would draw people on the same side together, but evidently it didn't work that way in this case. thanks for that Anyway, my father died when I was 9 years old, so that was the end of that. I wasn't the slightest bit racists after that until I turned about 40. Up to that time I actually had quite many black friends and also worked with many black coworkers, all of whom I got along with just fine. When I was about 40 I was working for a company. They decided to send all of their workers to a 3-day seminar called "Racial Diversity". It was mandatory and everyone had to attend. I seriously would have skipped out on it altogether if it wasn't mandatory because I already knew that I wasn't racists. I even told this to a coworker at the time and he replied saying, "Well don't worry, after you attend this seminar you will be a racist". I laughed, but by his mannerism I could see that he was being quite serious. I attended the seminar. The lecturer was a black man. And I mean black. He was as black as black can be. Extremely dark skin color. He also wore very bright white shirt that could blind you to truly emphasize the contrast. I swear he did this on purpose. And the very first thing he did at that meeting was to stand up in front of everyone, pause for a while looking everyone directly in the eye as he scanned the room, and then almost like one of those Southern Baptist preacher he pointed at everyone and proclaimed in a very loud stern voice, "Every single one of you is a racist!" I confess that I was already instantly peeved at the charge. Who is he to stand there and demand that everyone is a racist when he has no clue who he is even talking to? Then he went in to a big long lecture that was full of old worn-out clichés and bigoted assumptions that are already a form of prejudice in their own right. I couldn't help by 'roll my eyes' to some of the things that he was saying. And that didn't go unnoticed by him. On the contrary he started picking on me. I mean he started talking directly at me far more than he was looking at other people. I could feel a personal confrontation coming on and I hadn't even said a word. Then he said something that caused me to roll my eyes again and even crack a smile. I just couldn't help it. He was complaining that in Georgia there is a 'one-drop rule' still on the books that demands that anyone who has one-drop of African blood in their history is considered to be a 'black person'. My first reaction was why this bothered him so much. He couldn't be blacker if he tried, so a one-drop rule isn't going to have anything to do with him anyway. But another reason for my reaction was because we were in Pennsylvania. What does Georgia have to do with Pennsylvania. If he's concerned about the laws in Georgia why doesn't he go to Georgia and complain about it? We're not Georgian legislators. He actually did confront me at that time and ask me what was on my mind and I shared with him some of my above thoughts. This only caused him to become even more focused on me and he was standing over me (towering over me at about 7 foot tall). I'm tall at 6' 2", but he was at least a foot taller than me. Anyone he's taking advantage of this towering physique to look down at me and basically chastising me for being so unconcerned about racism. But that's not true anyway. If I were in Georgia I'd vote against racism if I could. He's jumping to all sorts of wrong conclusions. Then he started talking about 'respecting customs' of other cultures, etc. And this is when he started to talk about the "Black Community". He was going on about this for quite sometime, and I tried not to roll my eyes the best I could but at points I just couldn't help myself. Once again he approached me, and confronted me about why I keep rolling my eyes. I told him that I thought this was supposed to be a seminar against racism and now you're talking about the "Black Community". To me that just sounds like a form of segregation. Should we denounce that very term and start talking about the "Human Community". He looked at me with eyes that looked they belonged to Satan himself and shouted, "You just don't get it! It's all about racial "DIVERSITY". Well, I really couldn't help myself at that point. I rolled my eyes right then and there as he was standing just inches away form me. It was just a natural reaction honest! I wasn't trying to piss him off. I just truly didn't understand. One the one hand he claims to be wanting to do away with 'racism' and on the other hand he's demanding a recognition of a "Black Community". To me that just seems like a total oxymoron, and from my point of view whoever designed this whole 'Racial Diversity" program seems to have some sort of plans to create an atmosphere of more segregation rather than less. Well, the seminar finally ended and I was really glad it was over. I returned to the workplace and my coworker asked me what I thought of it. I told him he was right. I never thought I could become a racist but now I'm having second thoughts. Even to this very day I disagree with the whole idea of dividing things up into a "White Community" and a "Black Community". How is that going to solve racism? I think we should create a brand new program called "Human Diversity" and just talk about the "Human Community" and just leave race out of it altogether. So that's been my experience with racism. On a personal level I've always gotten along with everyone just fine. Just as a footnote: My coworker was indeed right. The racial tension in our workplace seemed to increase after that mandatory seminar rather than decrease. It also got people thinking about race when prior to attending that seminar they weren't even thinking about race at all. I know it had that effect on me. I would have been far better off if I had never experienced that seminar. Trust me. |
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Lulu, I agree with everything in your post. My understand of what you are saying is that, historically, the very idea of 'race' has been used to justify an inhuman attitude towards other groups of people, and that some biologically unjustified ideas were used to bolster those views. Many myths have existed, many lies have been told.
I'm not sure that people today use the word 'race' anywhere close to how the word was used when such abuses were at their peak. To me, the main 'meaning' I give to identifying a persons 'race' would be 'This person has visible evidence that their ancestry draws heavily from a particular continent'. Or, in some cases one can recognize a smaller grouping - like a particular tribe of native american, a particular region of eastern europe, etc. Since I consider those old lies & myths to be thoroughly dis-proven and no longer an active part of our mainstream culture, when someone says 'race has no basis in biology', I tend first to think that the person is trying to deny the larger manifestation of the fact that: for most families, family members have more genetic similarity than they do with people outside their family, for most tribes, members of the same tribe tend to have more genetic similarity than they do with members outside the tribe, and for some islands/regions, true natives of a particular island/regions have more genetic similarity with each other than the do with others. I have the impression that this is not what you mean, at all. The racism I've experienced is nothing like what you described in your post. I wonder if you might personally know people who actually believe the BS 'biological justifications' for treating people with a different heritage as if they were less than human. If I was exposed to such, I would probably put my focus on a different part of this conversation than I am. |
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The racism I've experienced is nothing like what you described in your post. I wonder if you might personally know people who actually believe the BS 'biological justifications' for treating people with a different heritage as if they were less than human. If I was exposed to such, I would probably put my focus on a different part of this conversation than I am. kev, i wished everyone thought like you. *sighs* yes, indeed...i have met people like this. people who were horrified that my mother would choose a "black" man...who believed my sister was less than. i've actually been told that black people were inferior, that it came from the bible, that they were descendants of cain and therefore cursed with lower intelligence and darker skin. sadly, i kid you not. i've had grown men, supposed christians, call me vile names for nothing other than those i associate with. felt the stereotypes...louder, low class, lower intelligence. my own biological father disowned me over it...the reason i'm not completely bitter is that the man i called dad, my step-father...who served three tours in vietnam and was a marine for over twenty years as well as a sheriff's deputy...he refused to let me become bitter. i'd come from a sheltered place, a college town that was full of every hue there is to a tiny hate-filled town in the bible-belt, and it blew me out of the water to see how people thought. instead of getting angry with me, he'd sit me down and we'd discuss the whys and hows...how to see through the other side. i was like a fire burning, but he never lost control, never slipped...we discussed how we could only change how people thought by being above these things...in between the vomiting from the chemo. people talk of affirmative action, of the unfairness...but until you've been on the receiving side of real prejudice, you have no freaking clue what it's like. and this is just what *i* received. my sister got much worse...and those who are darker get the worst of all. most people aren't like you; they don't use race as only a descriptor. they use it as a separation, whether they admit it or not. |
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<---------- Haven't got the time nor the inclanation to be a racist, my background nor my upbringing would not let me. The childen I have proves I am not this way inclined, they are of mixed origins ( half Black and half White) I have a mother who is half East Indian and Black, oh, I could go on.............
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not a rasist
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it's hard to be racist when you hate everybody like i do
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it's hard to be racist when you hate everybody like i do  http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=357958 |
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I'm racist against stupidity, violence, ignorance, close minded people, cheaters, crooks (of all sorts) and most of all for those that judge without knowing.
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